Chapter 52: I’m Hungry (Part 1)

As the capsule whirred on, Milo tucked himself into the corner of his seat, leaving as much cushion as possible between his hip and a girl’s furry jacket.

"Those were my family’s trees, and I’d sneeze like a machine gun every time I went near them. Glad I don’t live out there anymore."

"Ha-ha-ha."

Next to the girl sat a boy, presumably her boyfriend, and he yapped on. They both looked about nineteen, probably university students.

Across from Milo, Layla shared the bench with an old man whose knuckles were ingrained with dust and a woman absorbed in her phone. The old man looked up at every burst from the couple; the woman hadn’t acknowledged either of them.

Furry, Loud, Old Man, Phone. A band of four strangers, with fourteen possible destinations, six of which were out of Milo’s scope, past Jence.

Four stayed the number for all of one stop. A man with a suitcase walked in.

Really? You can travel anywhere and you choose the slums?!

With six seats already taken, the man stationed himself by the window, between Milo and Layla.

Adding Suitcase to the list, Milo rested his head against the window and shut his eyes like a boy dozing off.

If he’d infected any of them, he couldn’t let them carry the Plague home.

An Off as each of the five left should cover them, and he could afford that much more on the Gauge.

He would need to remember their stops, though.

If an infected person slipped past him, a place name would tell him where to start looking.

Milo opened his eyes. Layla had the notebook, along with everything else in his backpack, and Suitcase’s legs were the only obstacle.

"I was reading about the stone up those hills. How d’you reckon it compares with Moud’s residence?" Loud yapped on.

"Ha-ha-ha."

At this point, Milo considered changing the girl’s pseudonym to Ha-ha-ha.

"Can I have my bag?" he asked, extending a hand beyond Suitcase.

Suitcase flattened himself against the window to make room, smearing the patch Milo had fogged with his breath.

Oh God...

"Why?" Layla asked.

Old Man swung his head toward them, nostrils flaring.

Eyeing him, Milo hesitantly grasped the strap.

"It’s mine."

She released it, and he bent over the bag for his pencil and notes, digging through books that hadn’t been there before.

"What’s...?"

Suitcase stepped back into the gap, clipping Milo’s head with a thigh.

"Sorry! Didn’t see you there."

Milo scratched where he’d been hit.

"No harm done," he said through his teeth.

By the next stop, he had squashed back into the corner with the notebook propped on his knee. The shoes had left a brown crescent of mud over Does Bookmark work on the opening page.

"Ding, dong! Marling stop."

Phone looked up from her device and strode out.

Once the door sealed...

Off.

Suitcase settled into the emptied seat, and Milo scrawled the data down in his notebook.

Phone - Marling.

"What are you doing?" Layla asked.

"Fortunes."

Loud’s head came up. "Wait, you read fortunes?"

At the callout, Milo’s shoulders spiked and Old Man’s dusty fingers tightened.

"Sometimes."

"Do mine!" The boy leaned on his girlfriend, who uttered a ha-ha-ha and nudged him back into his seat. "Come on, man. What’ve you got?"

Despite existing for a grand total of twenty minutes, the tarot deck had attracted a customer.

Loud’s backpack sat upright on his lap instead of the floor. Either his stop was close, or he would correct any fortune teller who guessed it was, naming the real one.

"Your stop’s coming up soon," Milo said. "Certain of it."

"Whoa."

"Babe," Ha-ha-ha said. "That’s not even a fortune."

"It’s a good one, though! Better than those girls over at Pipelee combined, I’d bet!"

"Ha-ha-ha."

"Ding, dong! Almonry stop."

Loud threw a thumbs-up at him, kissed Ha-ha-ha on the lips, and went out. Suitcase followed.

This time, Milo recited Off once when they crossed the threshold, and Off once more when the door sealed shut and the capsule accelerated.

He could scarcely imagine that jacket going unnoticed in Jence, so Ha-ha-ha would probably be traveling farther. Where did this line even end?

With a phone, he could have looked up the whole route instead of waiting for the speaker to announce it one stop at a time.

Cities and institutions rented the capsules. The line continued to whoever paid for it, serving the stops along the way. Governors pooled their money in a town at the end of a stretch so a route rented from there would pass through all their towns.

Out that way, the beams ran on through the Misprint. They could withstand a Calamity, but nobody wanted to build a town beside them, so a stop in the middle of nowhere would tell him very little about where anyone lived.

He needed a map with more on it than the stops he used himself, and apparently he also needed the money for a phone.

"Ding, dong! Loam stop."

The last one before Jence.

Old Man got to his feet, and Milo tried Off.

After the man stepped onto the platform, he was still wondering whether it had worked.

Off.

The door sealed.

Milo repeated the command a third time, then struggled to enter Old Man - Loam with a hand that wouldn’t keep the pencil steady.

Jence was two minutes away, and he knew nothing about the one passenger left except that her boyfriend had been impressed by a guess. Pipelee meant something to them.

Layla had watched him fill the page with strangers’ stops. Under her attention, he edged out of the corner and addressed the girl.

"Nice jacket."

"I have a boyfriend."

"Where do you live?"

Layla furrowed her brows, her eyes on the pencil trembling in his grip.

"Pipelee, those girls..." Milo studied the page as though it contained more than a list of stops. "The notebook is telling me that... I’m better than them."

"Maybe."

"I can fortune-tell your future... but a location is needed."

"Why don’t you tell me? You managed it with him."

"B-Because..." He glanced at Layla and swallowed. "That was a different reading. I used up the limit. For the day, of that. The cards are petty. But I know your stop’s after Jence."

"What’s Jence?"

"The next stop."

Ha-ha-ha slid over to the farther seat.

If no one else had been there, Milo would’ve punched a hole right through the window and thrown this shitty notebook out into hell.

He could recite Off once more at Jence and leave her on the capsule, but it had taken three for the man at Loam.

All of them raised the Gauge.

Maybe he could stay aboard and find out her location with no more tricks.

However, the return would bring another capsule with possibly another set of passengers to watch.

He wasn’t doing this all over again.

He would walk back from her stop, as he’d wanted to from the start.

When the capsule slowed for Jence, Milo remained in the corner with his notebook open.

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "I’m Hungry (Part 2: Finale)" ... ⤵︎ [!]